Hillary Had No Role in Irish Peace, Despite Bill's Claims

Recently, as only Hillary can do, she claimed that she was “deeply involved in the Irish peace process.” Bill has also picked up the theme, citing her “independent” role in resolving the centu ry-old conflict as “experience” with which to justify a White House run.

How odd that Hillary forgot to mention her pivotal role in Ireland just four years ago, when she wrote her $8 million memoir, Living History. There, she told a very different story.

Her first mention of Ireland was in a discussion of Bill’s October 2004 trip:

“The trip highlighted Bill’s milestones in foreign affairs. In addition to his pivotal role in easing the tensions in the Middle East, he was now focusing on the decades Long Troubles in Northern Ireland.” (Emphasis added)

No memories of her own involvement in the Irish “troubles.”

Ireland next appeared in Hillary’s memoirs in 1995, when the Clintons visited Belfast and Dublin. According to Hillary, while Bill met with the “various factions” of Irish politics, Hillary met with women leaders of the peace movement. Rather than discuss the difficulties of the peace process, Hillary focused on a teapot used by the women:

“They poured tea from ordinary stainless steel teapots, and when I remarked how well they kept the tea warm, Joyce insisted that I take a pot to remember them by. I used that dented teapot every day in our small family kitchen in the White House...”

Other than to describe the women’s fear when their sons left the house and their support for a ceasefire and an end to the violence, Hillary doesn’t cover much policy.

She then describes a visit to Derry to meet John Hume, the charming Nobel Peace Prize winner, where “tens of thousands thronged the streets in the freezing cold to roar approval of Bill and America, and I was filled with pride and respect for my husband.” (Emphasis added)

After Derry, the Clintons went to Belfast to light the Christmas tree in front of City Hall. Following the ceremony, they attended a reception.

No mention of Hillary’s deep involvement.

From Belfast, the Clintons flew to Dublin, where Hillary addressed a group of women from both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. According to her recollections, she “praised the bravery of Irish women who had stood up for peace.”

After meeting the Irish president, the U.S. ambassador, Ted Kennedy’s sister, and the Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney, Bono and the Clintons went shopping and tried to trace Bill Clinton’s mother’s genealogy.

Dick Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of 2010: Take Back America. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com